CURATED CONTENT SOURCES AND DIGITAL PLATFORMS
Curated Content Sources:
Pinterest -
Founded by Ben Silbermann in 2009 (Shontell, 2012), this application features galleries of visual content from a variety of interests; makeup trends, skincare tips, fashion styling, memes, home decor or cooking recipes that “spark inspiration” (Pinterest Help, 2015) to its users. This can be in forms of “image, video or products” (2015) from various selection of topics that can be either shared or created by both personal and business accounts where it would be reshared by their followers by incorporating it to their pin-boards or posting it on social media.
To use Pinterest, they can either set up a personal or business account and create their own pins by uploading their own image or outsourcing from a website link:
Users can discover content by browsing the explore page and clicking different categories where pins associated with the category would be present:
Or users can use the search bar and input keywords that would be more specific to the type of content they are looking for e.g., makeup looks:
Along with its extensive and balanced age demographic with around 35% of Millennials and Generation X users on the platform, the female-dominant application (Russell, 2017) is easily accessible without an account where you can browse through the curated material and use the search bar; however, creating and interacting with pins, following accounts, and organising mood-boards are just some of the exclusive features available for registered users.
Through Pinterest, businesses are given a creative outlet to portray their brand image through profile customisation, have specific content organised for multiple target personas through pin-boards as well as have their content be reshared with the capability of being redirected to the original post when clicking the media (Edelman, n.d.)
Buzzfeed -
Considered as the best hub of “food, news, pop culture and commerce” (Buzzfeed, 2015), Buzzfeed attracts audiences with their infamous clickbait articles and trendy content since its founding in 2006 by Jonah Peretti (2015). With a target audience that is mostly “skewed towards women” (Shamshev, 2020) within the impressionable age range of 18-34 years old (2020), Buzzfeed uses a balanced combination of catchy headlines and memes for the purpose of it going viral (Jessie’s Edit, 2017) backed up with the constant agenda of reporting news in a shareable and entertaining way (GWI, 2021). The type of content on Buzzfeed are predominantly news articles, blog entries and quizzes, but also makes use of their subsidiaries where video content is linked to the topic requested e.g., video content for food will be found in the ‘TASTY’ section while crime mysteries will be under the “UNSOLVED TRUE CRIME” section.
Website visitors can use the navigation bar to select the desired topic of content they want to consume e.g., television and movies or food as well as inputting keywords on the search bar e.g., makeup:
Figure xi. Screenshot of the navigation menu of the Buzzfeed website (Buzzfeed, 2021)
Figure xii. Screenshot of a keyword search on Buzzfeed and its results (Buzzfeed, 2021)
On these articles, audiences can be recommended with related or popular blog posts where brands advertisements are merged in the clicked article e.g., Maybelline eyebrow pencil product landing page after it was mentioned in a Buzzfeed article as one of the easy beauty products to use for lazy people:
Staying true to its original claim of being the online hub of internet’s best material, majority of its content is sourced from Tumblr, Instagram, YouTube, and Reddit (Dhar, 2015) that has been accompanied by original reporting while the rest is participation from the Buzzfeed user community that have a login account.
Digital Platforms:
Facebook -
Facebook is the largest social networking application that was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and his classmates (Hall, 2021) where users register to create a profile, upload media like images and videos, compose statuses or stories, buy and sell items in the marketplace, connect with friends and family through messenger, join or create groups as well as interact within their news feed by reacting, commenting or sharing on the post (2021).
As of 2021, it is a subsidiary of the rebranded company ‘Metaverse’ along with Instagram, thus majority of its features can also be seen on Facebook e.g., stories and vice versa, where a shopping function has also been incorporated on Instagram like Facebook marketplace:
Facebook covers a large demographic of its users, mainly with the target audience at the 25-34 years old age range (Chen, 2021) so the platform’s multi-purpose feature is beneficial in which user can navigate through various content from short clips, anecdotal posts, long videos, livestream videos, images to brand pages all in one newsfeed; most have originated from Facebook itself or reshared from other social media channels like Twitter. The way a user sees this content is determined by its multi-dimensional algorithm with many layers of models and rankings (Cooper, 2021) where posts don’t appear in chronological order but rather sorted in relevance dependent on the user’s past behaviour and interactions.
As a free application, Facebook’s aim is to keep the user scrolling so they can see more ads (2021) for their financial benefit. The algorithm considers the relationship, type, popularity, and recency (2021) of the post between the user and personalise it for the user so that similar posts would not appear consecutively.
Businesses can also use the advertising feature in ‘Facebook Business’ where they can set up an ad campaign depending on their own marketing objectives, target audiences and lead method:
Instagram -
In 2010, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger birthed to the famous photo-sharing and video-sharing social media platform known as Instagram (Antonelli, 2020). Its target audience is mostly made up of users below the age of 34 (Statista, 2021) where they interact with lifestyle images, story quizzes, featured or promotional posts, video content and livestreams that have been posted by themselves or the accounts they follow. Registered users can upload a picture or a story in which they can also tag other users and add captions:
Edit their profile by writing a short biography or adding story highlights:
Browse through the newest feature reels (that is inspired by the short video platform Tiktok) or go through their Explore page and navigate through their recommended posts:
Like Facebook, Instagram is highly dependent on ad revenue and shares the same algorithm logic when personalising the user’s feed according to its relevance. The platform only differs in its rankings when it considers the number of saves a type of post got, profile visits and the time spent of the user (Thomas, 2021).
The advertising feature of Instagram is interconnected with Facebook, where an ad campaign can be designed for both platforms with its respective aspect ratio and text format. However, it can also be achieved directly through Instagram by clicking the promotions tab on the user profile or while creating the post and the ad tools. In addition, business accounts can setup Instagram shopping and view page insights where engagement and interaction percentages are shown.
TikTok -
Since its launch in 2016 by Chinese company ByteDance (D’Souza, 2021), it has rapidly grown to be one of the biggest platforms with over one billion monthly active users; 39% of them in the age range of 19-29 years old (Fanbyte, 2019). The appeal of Tiktok is the short, easily consumable content resulted in a skyrocket trend of active users – they can scroll through their ‘Following’ page and their curated ‘For You’ page with countless videos that varies from lip-syncing, dance challenges, reviews, memes, hacks, or trending discourses as a form of entertainment. On Tiktok, users can use the search bar to find accounts, hashtags and videos as well as be given search recommendations and popular videos under the ‘Trending’ tab.
Having an account is not required to view and share videos on Tiktok, however, creating a Tiktok, commenting, liking, replying, and following accounts is a registered user-privilege only.
Figure xxxiii. Screenshots of upload function, user account and the comment section (Tiktok, 2021)
A lot of active users mean that this is an obvious opportunity for companies to market their products. However, the constantly changing demand and interests of users on the platform as trends fade to make way for newer trends, Tiktok’s algorithm is always refreshing and reinventing itself to fit the user’s viewing preferences and habits (Mullery, 2021). The basis of this algorithm includes factors like user interaction, video consumption and user activity (2021) in which effectively keeps audiences hooked and companies are given the golden opportunity to advertise their products during this attention span. Companies use the consumable content to their advantage by incorporating more than 10 interest and behaviour categories when making an ad campaign on Tiktok so that when an interest or behaviour shifts, any aspects that fit the selected categories will ensure that the advertised product will still appear to their target audiences.
Platform Suitability:
Based on the marketing objectives mentioned earlier, the key aspects Beauty Bliss needs is an increase in brand awareness, website traffic and social media engagement against its competitors, and this can be achieved with displaying videos, guides, inspiration, hacks, product reviews and tutorials (Quick Sprout, 2021) that is relevant to their target audiences common pain points concerning beauty industries. As of the chosen curated sources, the content provided by Pinterest is inclusive of both images and videos by inputting the related keywords e.g., infographics and product reviews of an eyeliner, whereas Buzzfeed provides short or long and text and visual content (Brennan, 2016) from clickbait articles of how-to tutorials and guides like “5 beauty items to achieve a no-makeup makeup look”. This is reinforced by Russell (2017) who finds that 80% of millennial users find products they want to buy on Pinterest and around 70% say that they connect with brands through pin-boards and follow recommendations given by the platform. The accessibility of both content sources makes integrating content material to digital platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok an easy process, as the images and videos are compatible through the share function. The Buzzfeed blog articles can be reshared on Facebook and target audiences at the awareness stage who is struggling with product misinformation can be ‘hooked’ in by catchy headlines. Pinterest content like memes or educational product reviews e.g., cruelty-free beauty products that has been integrated on Instagram and/or Facebook will guide the buyer during the consideration stage, as well as tutorial videos found on Pinterest can be reposted on Tiktok. Memes and educational reports on Buzzfeed regarding product quality would be useful in the buyer’s decision stage, convincing them that buying from Beauty Bliss and trusting their brand is beneficial for them.
References:
Antonelli, W. (2020). A beginner’s guide to Instagram, the wildly popular photo-sharing app with over a billion users. Business Insider Australia. https://www.businessinsider.com.au/what-is-instagram-how-to-use-guide-2020-9
Brenner, M. (2016). Content Marketing Lessons From BuzzFeed. Marketing Insider Group. https://marketinginsidergroup.com/content-marketing/content-marketers-learn-buzzfeed-study/
Buzzfeed. (2015). About BuzzFeed. https://www.buzzfeed.com/about
Chen, J. (2021). 20 Facebook stats to guide your 2021 Facebook strategy. Sprout Social. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/facebook-stats-for-marketers/
Cooper, P. (2021). How the Facebook Algorithm Works in 2021 and How to Work With It. Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard. https://blog.hootsuite.com/facebook-algorithm/
D’Souza, D. (2021). What Is TikTok?. Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/what-is-tiktok-4588933
Dhar, R. (2015). Where Does BuzzFeed Source Its Content From?. Priceonomics. https://priceonomics.com/where-does-buzzfeed-source-its-content-from/
Edelman, J. (2018). 5 Reasons Why & 5 Ways How to Use Pinterest - Zehnder. Z-Comm.com. https://www.z-comm.com/perspectives/5-reasons-why-5-ways-how-use-pinterest/
Fanbytes. (2019). Explained: What is TikTok?. https://fanbytes.co.uk/explained-what-is-tiktok/
GWI. (2021). How BuzzFeed Shifted Brand Perceptions with Insight. Gwi.com. https://www.gwi.com/case-studies/buzzfeed
Hall, M. (2021). Facebook. Brittanica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Facebook
Jessie‘s Edit. (2017, April 7). BuzzFeed: The Target of Social Media - RTA902 (Social Media) - Medium. Medium; RTA902 (Social Media). https://medium.com/rta902/buzzfeed-the-target-of-social-media-cd1912e16b7c
Lada, A. (2021). How does News Feed predict what you want to see?. Facebook Technology. https://tech.fb.com/news-feed-ranking/
Meng, A. (2019). What is Pinterest? How does Pinterest work? Getting Started. Infront Webworks. https://www.infront.com/blog/what-is-pinterest-and-how-does-it-work/
Mullery, S. (2021). How the TikTok Algorithm Works in 2021 [+Tips for More Views]. Tinuiti. https://tinuiti.com/blog/paid-social/tiktok-algorithm/
Pinterest Help. (2018). All about Pinterest. https://help.pinterest.com/en/guide/all-about-pinterest
Quick Sprout. (2021). Quicksprout.com. https://www.quicksprout.com/types-of-content-that-will-drive-more-traffic/
Russell, J. (2017). Top Pinterest Demographics That Matter to Social Media Marketers. Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard. https://blog.hootsuite.com/pinterest-demographics-for-business/
Shamshev, T. (2020). Who is BuzzFeed’s target audience?. Findanyanswer.com. https://findanyanswer.com/who-is-buzzfeeds-target-audience
Shontell, A. (2012). A Non-Geek’s Guide To Pinterest, The Biggest Internet Hit Since Facebook. Business Insider Australia. https://www.businessinsider.com.au/a-non-geeks-guide-to-pinterest-the-biggest-internet-hit-since-facebook-2012-2?r=US&IR=T Statista.(2021). Instagram: age distribution of global audiences 2021. https://www.statista.com/statistics/325587/instagram-global-age-group/
Thomas, M. (2021). This is How the Instagram Algorithm Works in 2022. Later.com. https://later.com/blog/how-instagram-algorithm-works/
Image List:
Figure i. Shower Meme (https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/373095150391021557/?d=t&mt=login)
Figure iv. Pinterest Explore (https://www.pinterest.nz/ideas/)
Figure v. Pinterest Search Results (https://www.pinterest.nz/search/pins/?q=makeup%20look%20video&rs=typed&term_meta[]=makeup%7Ctyped&term_meta[]=look%7Ctyped&term_meta[]=video%7Ctyped)
Figure vi. Video Post (https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/331225747600167675/?d=t&mt=login)
Figure viii. Order Online Meme (https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/272327108697601243/?d=t&mt=login)
Figure ix. Beyonce Meme (https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/17310779809699607/)
Figure x. Article written by Peck, P. (2018) (https://www.buzzfeed.com/patricepeck/20-funny-makeup-memes-for-beauty-lovers)
Figure xii. Buzzfeed Search Results (https://www.buzzfeed.com/search?q=makeup)
Figure xiii. Article written by Lord, E. (2021) (https://www.buzzfeed.com/emmalord9/quick-easy-lazy-beauty-products)
Figure xv. Buzzfeed Content Map (https://medium.com/rta902/buzzfeed-the-target-of-social-media-cd1912e16b7c)
Figure xix. Facebook Algorithm (https://tech.fb.com/news-feed-ranking/)
Figure xxi. Signals FB (https://blog.hootsuite.com/facebook-algorithm/)
Figure xxxiv. Tiktok Ad Manager (https://ads.tiktok.com/help/article?aid=9598)
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